CB360 Week-3 Composite Baseball Rankings (2014)

Here’s another quick look at the most recent update to CB360′s 100-point Composite National Rankings CNR), following week-2 of the 2014 season (though games as of Feb. 23). There are four new teams to the CB360 top-50: (39) USC, (46) Tennessee, (48) Florida International and (49) Baylor, replacing UNLV, Washington State, Stanford and North Florida.

After Opening Week (which feature 50 in theCB360 top-50, due to a tie), Texas Tech entered the top-50 while Coastal Carolina and Liberty dropped out.

It should be noted that there are some quirky aspects to the current CNR formula –as the USA Today preseason coaches poll still is being used (a new update to that poll should be forthcoming next week). The current CNR also includes preseason NCAA Tournament projections from Baseball America and Perfect Game, but those factors will be removed from next week’s CNR update while adding various RPI formulations (plus a small bonus for predicted conference finish) to the mix.

The CB360 top-50 entering the third week of the season was led by Florida State with a slight edge in front of Virginia, with the rest of the current top-10 including: LSU, Cal State Fullerton (the preseason #1), Oregon State, Vanderbilt, Oregon, South Carolina, North Carolina State and Mississippi State. South Carolina is the only current top-10 team in the CNR that entered the season outside of the top-10 (12th).

With more significant movement expected over the next couple weeks, there still have been a handful of teams that have climbed up the CNR top-50 over the first couple of weeks in the 2014 season. In addition to the five teams that have cracked into the top-50, Cal Poly has used a series sweep of Kansas State and a series win at UCLA to move up from 27th in the preseason to CNR to its current position of 16th. Louisiana-Lafayette has climbed from the 24th to 18th position, and Kentucky currently is 33rd, after opening at 44th in the preseason CNR.

(Again, further analysis forthcoming next week, when the numbers should be more indicative of the relative status of teams through the first few weeks of play).

COMPOSITE NATIONAL RANKINGS (CNR) CRITERIA: Teams receive points based on their standings in each poll/rating/projection (60 pts for #1; 59 for #2, etc.). For polls involving voting points (coaches and CB) and the various RPI-type ratings, the CNR adjusts to reward teams that have larger margins in the voting/point totals (whereas two teams with nearly the same voting-point total will be closer in the CNR allotment for that poll). Note that strength-of-schedule typically is factored into RPI formulations … thus the actual SOS numbers only are used early in the season (SOS are not used in the CNR when RPI already are in the mix). For the NCAA field projections, teams are awarded CNR points based on their respective seedings, “last in” and “last out,” etc.

The polls/ratings/projections are averaged, with 40 points typically then added to each total in order to yield the 100-point benchmark. Early in the season (projected SOS) and late in the season (final-10 games), a maximum bonus/penalty of 0.3 (SOS) or 0.5 points (final-10) is factored into the formula (in that case, 39.7 or 39.5, rather than 40, is added to the poll/rating/projection avg.).